She never came out.
Instead, my mother had been crying for hours, the muted, muffled sounds no more easily ignored than a piercing scream. I felt close to vomiting as I sat in the hall outside her bedroom, sat in the dark like a dead spider, arms wrapped around legs crossed and bent at the knees. I held myself as I shivered, shivered as I waited, waited for it to stop, for her to stop crying, to go back to bed. I waited so long I heard the whine of a hinge, a soft close. I felt Shayda move down the hall, felt her warmth as she sat next to me. Our shoulders touched. She didn’t flinch.
We didn’t speak.
I’d knocked on my mother’s door a hundred times, rattled the handle to no response. I stood again and pounded on it now, shouted for her to open the door. Only once, weakly, did she respond.
“Please, azizam,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”
The sun was coming up over the horizon, splintering the world in blinding strokes of color, painting the white walls of our house with a terrible, morbid beauty.
I left.
I ran down the stairs, ignoring Shayda’s sharp, relentless questions. I slammed open the connecting door to the garage, rifled through my father’s toolbox, retrieved a hammer, and charged back up the stairs, recognizing my mania only in Shayda’s horrified face. I didn’t care. I couldn’t take it anymore, not now that I knew, not now that I knew what my mother was doing, why she was hiding.
I couldn’t just stand here and let it happen.
Shayda looked at me like I was crazy, tried to yank the hammer out of my hand. She insisted that our mother deserved her privacy.
“She’s upset,” Shayda said, more gently than I knew her capable. “She’d gotten her hopes up about Baba. She’ll be okay in the morning.”
“Shayda,” I said, flexing my fingers around the hilt. “It is morning.”
“This is wrong. Maman has the right to be left alone. Sometimes it’s good to cry—maybe it’ll make her feel better.”
I looked her in the eye. “You don’t understand.”
“Shadi, stop—”
“Go back to bed,” I barked at my older sister.
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God. You really have lost your mind.”
I swung the hammer.
Shayda screamed. I swung it again, three more times, shattered the cheap metal knob, splintered the thin wood. I kicked the door, slammed it open with my shoulder.
I tossed the tool to the carpet, found my mother in her bathroom.
She was sitting on the cold tile in a robe, her bare legs stretched out in front of her. She was staring at the ground like a broken doll, her neck limp, a pair of open cuticle scissors clenched in one hand.
I saw the marks on her shins, the cuts that scored the skin but had not yet split. She was not bleeding.
“Maman,” I breathed.
When she looked up, she looked no older than me. Terrified, shame-faced. Alone. Tears had stained her cheeks, her clothes.
“I couldn’t do it,” she said in Farsi, her voice breaking. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”
I dropped to my knees in front of her. Took her hand. Pried the cuticle scissors from her fingers, tossed them aside.
“I kept thinking of you, and your sister,” she was saying, tears falling fast down her face. “I couldn’t do it.”
I lifted her up, braced her head against my chest as she shattered in my arms. Her cries were desperate, ragged, gut-wrenching sobs. She clung to me like a child, wept like a baby.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
I felt, but did not hear, a soundless movement. I turned my head carefully, slowly so my mother wouldn’t notice. Shayda was standing in the broken doorway, staring at the scene in a state of paralyzing disbelief. I felt true love for her in that moment, felt our souls solder together, knew our lives would be forever forged by a similar pain.
We locked eyes.
She covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head. She was gone before her tears made a sound.
My mother went to work an hour later. Shayda and I went to our respective schools. For all the world we were your garden variety of incomprehensible Muslim, one-note and easily caricatured. We articulated limbs, moved our lips to make sounds, smiled at customers, said hello to teachers.
The world continued to spin, taking with it, my mind.
I felt true delirium as I moved, exhaustion unlike any I’d ever known. I couldn’t even fathom how I was still upright; I felt like I was hearing everything from far away, felt like my body was not my own. My mind had the processing speed of molasses, my eyes blurring constantly. I needed to find a way to focus, needed to remember how to pay attention. I had failed, once again, to complete any of the homework due today, and I felt shame as I watched other students turn in their essays and worksheets, raise their hands to answer questions in clear and focused sentences. This month was suddenly more critical than ever and I was drowning, drowning when I needed, desperately, to keep my head above water.
As long as my father stayed alive, I planned on going away to college. I didn’t want to stay here, spend two years at the community college, transfer eventually. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. I wanted to leave and maybe never, ever come back. And I wanted to get into a good school.
I nearly screamed at the sound of a gunshot.
I sat up suddenly, hyperventilating, heart racing in my chest. I heard a roar of laughter, looked up, looked around, realized I’d
